Manara - Qatar Research Repository
Browse

UV Index Forecasting under the Influence of Desert Dust: Evaluation against Surface and Satellite-Retrieved Data

Download (6.18 MB)
journal contribution
submitted on 2024-03-04, 11:11 and posted on 2024-03-04, 11:11 authored by Dillan Raymond Roshan, Muammer Koc, Amir Abdallah, Luis Martin-Pomares, Rima Isaifan, Christos Fountoukis

Human exposure to healthy doses of UV radiation is required for vitamin D synthesis, but exposure to excessive UV irradiance leads to several harmful impacts ranging from premature wrinkles to dangerous skin cancer. However, for countries located in the global dust belt, accurate estimation of the UV irradiance is challenging due to a strong impact of desert dust on incoming solar radiation. In this work, a UV Index forecasting capability is presented, specifically developed for dust-rich environments, that combines the use of ground-based measurements of broadband irradiances UVA (320–400 nm) and UVB (280–315 nm), NASA OMI Aura satellite-retrieved data and the meteorology-chemistry mesoscale model WRF-Chem. The forecasting ability of the model is evaluated for clear sky days as well as during the influence of dust storms in Doha, Qatar. The contribution of UV radiation to the total incoming global horizontal irradiance (GHI) ranges between 5% and 7% for UVA and 0.1% and 0.22% for UVB. The UVI forecasting performance of the model is quite encouraging with an absolute average error of less than 6% and a correlation coefficient of 0.93. In agreement with observations, the model predicts that the UV Index at local noontime can drop from 10–11 on clear sky days to approximately 6–7 during typical dusty conditions in the Arabian Peninsula—an effect similar to the presence of extensive cloud cover.

Other Information

Published in: Atmosphere
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/atmos11010096

Funding

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

History

Language

  • English

Publisher

MDPI

Publication Year

  • 2020

License statement

This Item is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Institution affiliated with

  • Hamad Bin Khalifa University
  • College of Science and Engineering - HBKU
  • Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute - HBKU

Usage metrics

    College of Science and Engineering - HBKU

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC